May 19, 2006

Internet Resources

Korky Koroluk

Pocket PCs save time and money

When Melani Deckert was planning a few weeks in Europe late last year, she decided she wanted an easy way to stay in touch with her office.

She carried a cell phone, of course, but because of the differences in time zones, getting people on the phone is not always easy when calling to or from Europe. Besides, she wanted to be able to access office files. So she talked with Gavin Steiner, who suggested she carry a pocket PC.

Steiner is president of Interprom Inc., an IT firm that deals with small- and mid-sized businesses. Deckert, in her capacity as president of Tuppen Construction Inc., was already a client.

She found she “really liked the pocket PC,” she told me during a telephone chat the other day. “So I thought it would be a good idea to try them with our staff.”

Tuppen Construction, based in Toronto, is a construction firm that operates within a well-defined niche. They do restoration work for insurance companies, and that’s all they do. But being so specialized brings with it some particular requirements.

“My estimators are on the road for at least six hours of every day,” Deckert said. “They also have to be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.”

That meant that, until mid-March, they relied heavily on their cell phones for communication. But they still had to go to the office occasionally to download photos to the office network, or to pick up files. Since they got pocket PCs a couple of months ago, they can simply e-mail photos to the office, since their PCs all include cameras.

“And if there are new assignments that have to be done very quickly, it saves them time since they don’t have to come in to get the appropriate files. We can simply e-mail them the information,” Deckert said.

The system is producing savings, she said, “although I haven’t worked out anything concrete yet.”

Using more e-mail means using fewer cellular talk minutes, she pointed out, “and data minutes are cheaper than talk minutes.”

The pocket PCs Deckert bought have a retractable keyboard, a phone, a camera and a few other bells and whistles. They run the Windows Mobile operating system and connect to the Microsoft Small Business Server installed on the office network last summer when Tuppen was upgrading their office computers.

Adding pocket PCs to the mix means her estimators operate directly on the office network, so “it’s like each of them has a desktop (computer) in their hand.

That means they can run estimating software, or spreadsheets, or any other program, take and send photos, send and receive e-mails, all from one small device.

The company has five of them in service — three for the estimators. As well, Deckert and her office manager each have one. And since the company already had a server in place, the cost of moving to pocket PCs wasn’t great.

The only negative encountered in the transition was the feeling that the phones in the new devices are a bit awkward to use when compared with a conventional cell phone. To get around that, the company installed something called Voice Command.

That’s a small voice-recognition program that will, on spoken command, call anyone on the user’s contact list. It also allows the user to dictate a random number which the unit will then phone. It can also provide caller ID on incoming calls, and read out a list of calls the user may have missed.

Those are features the users like having and, Deckert said, “we feel (Voice Command) has worked out pretty well.”

I saw an article recently in which the author decried what he sees as reluctance on the part of many construction firms to buy and use mobile computing gear. But the experience of people like Melani Deckert may help persuade some of them to take the plunge. It would seem there is both time and money to be saved by doing so.

Korky Koroluk is an Ottawa-based freelance writer. Send comments to editor@dailycommercialnews.com

Print | Email | Comment